


Nightmare

by usopping



Category: One Piece
Genre: Fanart, Gen, M/M, Nakamaship, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5782042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usopping/pseuds/usopping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanji wakes up from a nightmare to a seemingly empty room. Zoro tries to comfort him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

Zoro was sleeping sprawled on the ground of the men’s quarters on the Going Merry. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, but had rolled off without noticing at some point during the night. Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper had decided to camp out on the shore of the deserted summer island at which they had dropped anchor, and Sanji had stayed up to feed them and make sure Luffy didn’t raid the refrigerator. He had come down to the men’s quarters dead tired and, hardly noticing Zoro on the couch, fallen into his hammock, asleep in seconds. But now he was awake again and shaking fiercely from the nightmare. Seeing the empty hammocks around him nearly sent him into a panic, but a familiar snore from the couch area reminded him what was going on.

Practically tipping himself out of bed, Sanji stumbled over to Zoro and knelt by him, shaking him by the shoulder. Thankfully, the swordsman woke quicker than usual and grumbled, “The hell…?”

“Do me a favour,” Sanji whispered urgently.

“Cook?”

“Hold me.”

“ _What?”_

“Hold me,” Sanji repeated.

Propped up on his elbow and blinking in the darkness, Zoro wasn’t sure he understood what he was hearing, but even through his sleepy haze, he could sense something was wrong.

Sanji shifted awkwardly and said, “Listen, I’m begging you right now. Hold me.”

Zoro grunted and held up the blanket to allow Sanji to join him beneath it. Sanji didn’t hesitate, surprising Zoro further. He crawled right up to the swordsman and lay down next to him, shaking.

“Are … you okay?” Zoro asked in a murmur as he lowered the blanket again and tentatively wrapped his arm around the blond, half-expecting to get kicked in the head.

“Obviously not,” Sanji muttered.

“You’re cold. You’re shaking.”

“I know.”

Zoro held him a little more tightly. He had no idea what was happening, but he wasn’t exactly horrified by the situation. He’d never admit it, but he had daydreamed about holding the cook, touching him, even kissing him. Not that he sat around pining after the other man – it had been clear from the beginning that Sanji didn’t swing his way, and Zoro had long since accepted that. But he allowed himself the occasional fantasy. And now it was almost like one was coming true.

He noticed that Sanji was trying hard to control his breathing and asked again, “Are you okay?”

Sanji didn’t answer, only let out a strangled noise between shaky breaths, and Zoro doubted whether that was intentional. The swordsman rubbed the other man’s back gently, and slowly, his breathing went back to normal, and he relaxed a little. Even when he did, Zoro kept rubbing his back, as he was still shaking, though not as badly as before.

“Whatever happened … it might help to talk about it,” he said quietly. Normally he wouldn’t have tried – why would the cook want to talk to _him_ of all people? – but this was anything but normal.

“It’s stupid. You’ll just laugh,” Sanji muttered.

“Try me.”

The blond was silent for several moments. Then he whispered, “I have this … reoccurring nightmare. Been having it for most of my life. It’s a memory, really.” He tried to force a laugh, but all that came out was a shaky breath. “Back when I was a kid, I was working on a cruise ship as a chef’s apprentice and we were attacked by pirates in the middle of a storm. I … I shoulda just stayed put in the damn kitchens, but I got it in my head that they were going to kill us all, so I grabbed a knife and ran out on deck trying to fight them and yelling about finding All Blue. They all laughed, of course. All except for Zeff.”

“Zeff – the one from the restaurant?” Zoro asked, surprised. He had known that the head chef on the Baratie had been a notorious pirate, but not how he and Sanji had met.

“Yeah, that Zeff,” Sanji said wryly, sounding a bit more like his normal self. “Anyway, next thing I knew, I was swept overboard and … that’s usually where the nightmare starts. I’m thrown overboard and there’s nothing but cold water and darkness around me. I can’t see, I can’t breathe, I can barely _move_ , and I’m so cold and afraid, and I can’t tell which was is up, and I – I know I’m going to die, but that’s not what scares me. It’s … it’s that I’m dying _alone._ No one will know. No one will care. I’ll just disappear like I was never there to begin with.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Zoro said, his voice quiet, but firm.

“How do you know?” Sanji mumbled.

“I – _We_ won’t let it,” Zoro replied.

“Sometimes when I wake up, I can’t move or breathe,” the blond said. “T-Tonight when I woke up, all the hammocks were empty and I panicked. It’s s-so _stupid_ …”

“No, it isn’t. Listen,” Zoro said, feeling now that the cook had told him something so personal he should reveal something in return. “It’s not the same thing, but before I met Luffy and the rest of you, I was mostly alone, and that was fine. But now? I never wanna go back to that. Dead or alive.”

“Are you saying we all have to die with you when the time comes?” Sanji asked with a touch of his usual snark.

“No, dumbass, I’m saying … I’m afraid of being alone, too,” said Zoro.

To that, Sanji had no reply.

After a beat of silence, Zoro said, “Anyway, you survived, right?”

“Obviously.”

The swordsman hesitated. “What happened?”

Sanji sighed. “Zeff dove in after me, and we washed up on some rock. No plants or animals or shelter, and the sides were so steep that if we went down into the water to catch fish, we’d never get back up.

“Zeff had split up some food that had washed up with us – a big bag for him and a little one for me – and we sat on opposite ends of the rock, waiting for a ship. The food was enough to last five days if I ate normally, but I managed to make it last for twenty.”

“You were there for twenty days?” Zoro asked, remembering how hungry he had been after only a few days tied to that pole when Helmeppo had imprisoned him.

Sanji shook his head. “All in all, we were there for 80 days. I kept count. Luckily there were grooves in the rocks that caught the rain, so at least we had fresh water to drink sometimes, but … by the last day, I was so hungry, I decided to see if Zeff had any food left. Turned out his whole bag was sitting there untouched.

“I was prepared to kill him. I went to his side of the rock, armed with my knife, and split that sack open. He didn’t even try to stop me.”

“Why?”

“It was full of gold and jewels. We had all that treasure, but no food.” Now Sanji did manage a false laugh.

“But then how did Zeff survive?” Zoro asked, too curious to hold back.

“He ate his own leg,” Sanji replied.

The silence that followed this statement was deafening. Zoro waited for him to say he was joking, to offer some other explanation, but the silence stretched on between them and the true horror of the situation settled in a knot in Zoro’s throat. He gave Sanji a gentle squeeze, though he knew it was small comfort – even smaller if the cook was coming back to his normal self. He’d calmed down while he spoke and, no longer shaking, his silence was deep. It was a long while before he spoke again.

“A ship came by soon after that. We were saved, and we used all that gold to create Baratie.”

Zoro didn’t know what to say. His own small confession seemed to pale in comparison to the cook’s tale, and he wondered if he had been able to offer any comfort at all. He was still trying to wrap his head around how long the cook had been stranded, how long he’d gone without food… Zoro couldn’t imagine. He himself had barely lasted nine days, yet Sanji had been forced to go nearly ten times that, and as a _child_. And what must he have felt when he saw Zeff’s leg? Zoro wasn’t surprised he still had nightmares. His heart ached for the cook, and he tried to swallow the knot in his throat, to say something, though he still had no idea what.

“Zoro?” Sanji said suddenly.

“Yeah?” Zoro rasped.

“Would it be okay for me to … to stay here the rest of the night? I mean, no one will know…”

Zoro only just prevented himself from laughing, amazed that the cook thought he had to ask, that he thought Zoro cared if anyone saw. Sanji must have taken the choking noise he made instead to be hesitation or something similar, because he started backpedalling immediately.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to, I totally –”

“Of course you can stay, idiot.”

Sanji paused. “Shut up, marimo.”

Zoro could hear a smile in his voice.

 

(view in full [here](http://41.media.tumblr.com/bb6693b5a052c5583249c04e167dcb01/tumblr_o1bepqyX1D1ukasido1_1280.png))

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a 30 day challenge I'm doing on tumblr, though none of the rest of the entries so far included a fic, just art. You can see them here if you're interested: http://punkhazardous.tumblr.com/tagged/30OTP/chrono


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